Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad obtained "iPhone 3G," a mobile phone of Apple Inc, and immediately began to break it down to uncover its design concept with the help of engineers from a Japanese parts manufacturer (See related article).

Glancing over the iPhone, we realized that only two screws can be seen on the chassis.

"This is a design very characteristic of Apple, which gives importance to external appearance," an engineer said. "With this structural design, it is pretty hard to remove the chassis (composed of an upper part and a lower part)."

After taking out the two screws, he inserted a tool between the two parts by sheer force. After a few minutes of struggle, he managed to split the chassis into the upper part (display part) and the lower part (circuit part).

When the two parts were placed side by side, we noticed that the connector areas on them are printed with numbers, from 1 to 6.

"I think, by assigning numbers to the connector areas, Apple aims to clarify the order in which they are connected and to improve the efficiency of work," an engineer said.

The teardown is just getting started. We move on to the lower (circuit) part of the chassis.